Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday in Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) meeting cleared a number of proposals. Among them includes stake sale in five government-owned PSUs including General Insurance Companies. The new companies are New India Assurance, United India Insurance, Oriental Insurance , National Insurance and General Insurance. The government plans to reduce its stake in them to 75 percent from 100 percent, Jaitley told reporters. In last year’s budget Jaitley had announced that government would list the general insurance companies to improve transparency and accountability.

The credit guarantee trust’s assets will be increased to Rs 7500 crores by government, he said. Jaitley also gave ex-post facto approval to package for supporting Micro & Small Enterprises. The cabinet on Wednesday has given approval for the establishment of an off-campus Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in Jharkhand, outlay Rs. 200 crore. Cabinet has cleared a proposal for India taking full membership of International Vaccine Institute Governing Council.

The cabinet has given ex-post facto approval to MoU signed between India and Serbia in field of IT and Electronics. Law and Justice, Information Technology Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad said, Cabinet has approved Rs 10,000 crore incentive for electronic manufacturing by March 2018. Also, Cabinet has given its approval for introduction of Repealing & Amending Bill, 2017 to repeal 105 Acts. “Out of 1824 redundant laws till now 1175 have been repealed. Today we’ve decided to repeal 105 more old laws,” said Prasad.